Friday, December 31, 2010

12-31-2010



The roof the roof the roof is on fire, we didn't start the fire, burn baby burn...2010 went out with an explosive bang apparently. I don't really know what else to say about New Years Eve party pictures. I think I pretty much just covered everything you would expect. A countdown picture, (a whole night of) champaigne toasts, open container antics, dressed up girls, and pitstains. The only thing missing is kissin' pictures, but I'm too shy to post those.

...and that's it. Picture number three hundred and sixty-five of three hundred and sixty-five. I'm really surprised I made it all the way though the whole year with this many pictures.

Thursday, December 30, 2010

12-30-2010



They might be melted by tomorrow, but I've been waiting weeks for snowman snow. Nicole is naked in the picture above, here's one with her clothes on. Here's another one just because I'm so excited about snowmen. Really excited.

Here's an inappropriate looking picture of my coworker popping bottles at work today. I can't believe the year is almost over.

12-29-2010



Do you remember the commercials where they ate the pizza backwards like that? Advertising works. Nicole and I don't even like Pizza Hut, but we saw a commercial on TV and had to have stuffed crust. Then we started watching this on TV before working some more on the dollhouse (the real one, not the show on TV).

Tuesday, December 28, 2010

12-28-2010



Microsoft Windows 2000.

12-27-2010



We're on a mission to make my niece Baby Lily the youngest home owner in her neighborhood. We're turning this into this into these.

Sunday, December 26, 2010

12-26-2010



I love breakfast. Nicole loves Anthropologie and wasted no time to use her gift cards. I climbed mountains and found a jackalope. The farmer's vegetable stand is closed, and Christmas is over.

12-25-2010



Christmas is here. Snowman version of me is so baller, he has a gold chain with a snowman version of him on it. We woke up and opened presents at our house, then loaded up our sleigh with presents and went to have brunch and spend the day at Nicole's parent's. Then I did a bad job documenting, and a better job participating in the rest of the day's activities.

12-24-2010



It's Christmas Eve! Nicole made us a delicious and festive lunch of Tofurkey and cookies. Then we went exploring on the planet Hoth, added to my growing fancy booze collection, and went to church with my parents. Mushroom demanded to know where her presents were, so we let the cats have their new bed/house/scratching thing present after midnight.

Friday, December 24, 2010

12-23-2010



Nicole looks very excited that Christmas is almost here. Here's something very Christmas, and something not Christmas at all.

I took holiday pictures of all the creatures living in my house.

Red
Green
Snakeskin

Film is more fun. Look at this.

Wednesday, December 22, 2010

12-22-2010



Random mysterious deserts spontaneously appearing everywhere and begging to be eaten is one of the best/worst aspects of Christmas time. Today, a giant tray full of every kind of baklava ever showed up on the free counter at work. At first, I dissected bite sized bits so I could try a little of all of them...by the end of the night, I was pretty much eating by the handful.

This is what presents see.

Tuesday, December 21, 2010

12-21-2010



These pictures probably belong more for yesterday than today, but whatever...it's my blog and I do what I wanna. Last night/wayyy too early this morning, I set multiple alarms to wake myself up throughout various stages of the night to see the "big deal, once in the last 372 years, most amazing thing ever" solstice lunar eclipse. After dragging myself out of bed multiple times to sit in the snow for hours waiting to see the total eclipse and watch the moon magically turn red, I really just found out what a solid cloud sky looks like at four in the morning when you can no longer feel your legs.

P.s. I know there's a good Twilight joke about waiting all night in the cold to see a big let down called Eclipse in here somewhere, but I'm too bitter about the whole situation to make it funny.

P.p.s The obsessive organizer in me wants to group these moon shots with the other ones I took on 1-29 and 10-20.

Monday, December 20, 2010

12-20-2010



In 2010, Amazon.com is the North Pole, Santa Claus ditched the sleigh for a big brown UPS van, and I get little kid excited coming home to neatly wrapped (cardboard) boxes in my driveway.

Here's another seed pod update (see 11-22). I thought it was buried and gone from the snow plows, but it's still hanging in there.

Sunday, December 19, 2010

12-19-2010



We went to dinner with my parents, and I reclaimed (stole) some more of my grandfather's camera equipment from their house. I can't even wait to use this crazy looking thing.

12-18-2010



We went to see my friend Steve's show opening in a converted (reclaimed?) gallery/studio space that used to be an old warehouse. It was pretty much amazing. I would describe the building as having a lot of character. The basement was even crazier. It looked like the inspiration for a super creepy axe murderer horror movie. I think I could even play the villain. I love it there. I really want to go back to take more pictures sometime.

Here's a far less creepy picture of Sienna because I think it's cute.

Saturday, December 18, 2010

12-17-2010



Tonight Nicole and I went to go see Clemens, a band made up of people we went to high school/college with. We used to go to their shows all the time, but it's been about five years since the last time we saw them play. To make it even better they were opening for Hawthorne Heights, a band I developed an embarrassing fondness for, again probably about five years ago. Both bands brought back a bunch of good memories and were a lot of fun to see live. Here are some of my favorite pictures from the show.

Hawthorne Heights
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine

Clemens
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six

Thursday, December 16, 2010

12-16-2010



Nicole and I are really going for it this Christmas. We got all dressed up to make a snowman, but the snow was too powdery and wouldn't stick together. So we made these instead.

Wednesday, December 15, 2010

12-15-2010



Nicole decorated the Christmas tree tonight. Since this is our cat Mushroom's first Christmas living in our house, she was eager to help while Sienna just watched. The skunk that lived at our house last winter has his very own ornament, but we're glad he's not living here this year.

Tuesday, December 14, 2010

Monday, December 13, 2010

12-13-2010



I got a text this morning telling me to work from home today since outside looked like Antarctica. It's in contention for one of the best texts I've ever received. I'm not even complaining that I had to work extra hours tonight since I got to wear my pajamas all day and hang out with my cats.

After "work," I took it as a perfect opportunity to stay home and drink scotch since the snow had us buried alive. Now if you're familiar with my eating habits, you know that I eat like a 12 year old with no parents, but tonight was extra inspired. We made V For Vendetta-esque eggs in a basket...with hot dog buns. Don't laugh too much though, they were delicious and we totally had a party.

Sunday, December 12, 2010

12-12-2010



All good things...

R.I.P. Handlebarz
10-17 - 12-12

12-11-2010



The gallery show that I've been painting for opened in Columbus tonight. I did a horrible job documenting because I was too busy actually being involved in what was going on and being kind of freaked out and drinking way too much coffee. Here are a few shots I collected while walking around though. Kanye West bicycle (All of the Lights get it?). I'm attracted to clusters of things like this collection of hot sauces. Have you ever wondered what a bar full of Santas looks like?

Friday, December 10, 2010

12-10-2010



So I have a problem. A serious, bad, in-need-of-rehab, "I can't stop buying things off of Craigslist no matter how hard I try" problem. I'm blaming it on all the Treasure Pawn Pickers On A Roadshow shows that I watch, but really I think I'm just still obsessed with getting new toys. And now I don't have any parents to tell me that I already have enough G.I. Joes and make me stop anymore. So today, I fed my addiction and bought an original, unchanged since 1981 PK Ripper. I still kind of can't believe I own something this awesome. It's like a piece of 30 year old BMX history sitting in my house now.

In other news, I finished my paintings tonight. They're going to be in an opening tomorrow night, but I'll give the two of you that actually read this blog a sneak peek.

One
Two
Three
Four
Five

12-9-2010



Nicole's carnivorous plant terrarium that she got for her birthday in March is doing pretty well (at least the Hooded Pitcher Plants are, they're the only ones that grew at all). I like that they're carnivorous and it looks like they have little mouths. Here are some of their baby pictures from 4-26 and 8-17.

Wednesday, December 8, 2010

12-8-2010



...it's work related. No, really.

This would be kind of pretty to wake up to if I didn't know that it meant multiplying my commute to work times four. It's even worse when the parking lot looks like this when I'm leaving work.

Tuesday, December 7, 2010

12-7-2010



We chased this cat around the entire parking lot after dinner. I named him Peepers. He lives outside of the saddest, loneliest Mongolian Barbecue ever.

Monday, December 6, 2010

12-6-2010



So I kind of posted about it already, but yesterday we got an antique Sonora phonograph at an estate sale for the price of a bad dinner. It's the kind in a big cabinet that you hand crank to make work. It even came with a bunch of old gramophone records that we've been listening to. Specifically pertinent to Nicole's interests is a song about cats. Our house now sounds like someone's grandparents live here.

Sunday, December 5, 2010

12-5-2010



Today I loaded the Fuji Sensia 100 slide film I got yesterday into my Leica M4 and went exploring with Nicole. These are all random cross processed shots from today with no editing/photoshop/whatever. I'm pretty happy with how they came out.

Every good Sunday starts with brunch.
Bloody Mary hot sauce bar.
Instructions.
Country, State, and City.
We randomly went to an estate sale.
Look, a record player.
We need a bigger trunk.
Veranda.
Really Cleveland.
See, Cleveland.
Cuyahoga.
Cracks and drips.
Boards.
More boards.
Boards coming soon?
Or maybe urban renewal.
But probably boards and no copper pipes.
Maybe Jesus can save Cleveland.
He has a lot of work to do.
This looks a little apocalyptic.
But it's really one of my favorite places in the whole city.
Favorite flame.
Favorite.

Saturday, December 4, 2010

12-4-2010



Have you had a morning bun from Starbucks? Ask them to warm it up first, it's pretty much the best way to start a lazy, do-nothing-important Saturday. We went looking around for things in places we don't normally...or probably shouldn't ever go. Then we did some Christmas shopping for ourselves. I like cylindrical things that come in boxes.

12-3-2010



I took another Friday off work to day drink paint. This is a habit I could definitely get used to.

If you know me at all, you know that I'm pretty much crazy and obsessive compulsive, but only about really weird things. At the beginning of the year, I determined that I would eat every one of the monthly special sandwiches at Melt for the whole year. In addition to these monthly specials, they started doing weekend specials in honor of certain movies playing at local indie theaters...I decided to eat all of these too. Tonight, I completed my mission with the December sandwich and the Big Lebowski themed (vegetarian) meatball with fried mozzarella cheese stick sandwich.* It even came with another plastic toy to put on my desk at work.

*I feel the need to mention that Nicole and I shared and only ate halves at a time.

Friday, December 3, 2010

12-2-2010



He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named (7-8) came back to town for the first time tonight to make this city look bad all over again (He's those blurry blobs on the TV). So to celebrate the occasion, I poured myself an extra tall pour and went to paint in the basement instead of watching. Sienna just lounged around. The paintings are starting to come around. I'm now somewhat optimistic about actually finishing them before the show.

Earlier today, I lunched with The Eye of Sauron from Lord of the Rings. That's two fantasy novel/movie references in one post if you're counting.

Wednesday, December 1, 2010

12-1-2010



I'm under the impression that terms like "winter wonderland" and "Christmas spirit" are really just coping mechanisms people use in an attempt to negate how absolutely horrible cold and snow really are. In the continuation of this theory, I'm pretty sure early decorations are the next manifestation of this psycho-climatological disorder, and extra excessive, over the top decorators are really people living on the brink of complete weather inspired mental breakdown.

P.s. I really do love Christmas time, I just really really hate cold weather.